Mumbai: The Tamil Nadu government will introduce value added tax (VAT) from January 1, 2007, the state's commercial taxes minister S N M Ubhayathullah said. The government would introduce a bill in this regard in the coming assembly session, beginning on December 4, he said.

"If VAT had been introduced last year, the centre would have given 100-per cent compensation. But the state will receive only 75 per cent compensation now", he said. The state government would incur a revenue loss of Rs3,000 crore per annum after the introduction of VAT regime, the minister added.

He said the bill specifies tax to be levied on various commodities and this would be announced along with the introduction of the bill. The bill had already been drafted and traders could clarify their doubts and give suggestions to the commercial taxes department, he said.

Taxpayers would be given individual taxpayer identification number (TIN) and the process of issuing the taxpayer identification numbers would be simplified, he said. Traders who had been registered under the Tamil Nadu Sales Tax Act should also obtain registration certificates under the new Act, he said, adding that no registration fee would be collected from them.

About 3.9 lakh tax related cases had been registered so far against traders in the state, the minister said.